Why You Feel Exhausted Studying for the Bar Exam

Let me guess. Is this your idea of bar prep?

• Listen to lectures while sitting still like a statue
• Pause to take notes and fill in the blanks (doubling the time it takes to finish the lectures)
• Re-read giant outlines you highlighted last week (osmosis didn’t work) before falling asleep with the lights on

It’s like you’re experiencing the most annoying part about traveling—sitting for hours next to someone who takes up the armrest even though they got the window seat.

And repeating this every day. Is this what Limbo is like?

You’re drained and demoralized because you’re trying to “study” but aren’t feeling a sense of progress as words and days pass by you.

But why are you trying to do this the hard way?

Consuming is more tiring than doing

Would you rather overexert yourself, or get the scores you want with an easier way?

Traditional bar prep is built around consumption. Most of the time is spent consuming the product, not actually learning. You can listen to a lecture and walk away thinking you’re going to remember the material later.

It feels like studying. It’s low-friction and easy to do for hours.

Trying to hold all these rules and abstract ideas in your head is more difficult (and less effective) than turning them into practical insights. It’s as if they’re situationships that could leave any day.

The insidious part is that you feel like you need to do MORE of it even when (and because) it stops feeling productive. This makes you more and more stuck without you knowing why. (This might be hard to tell until later on in prep.)

It’s actually our mental energy that becomes a bottleneck. When you’re exhausted, you can’t do anything even if you have the time.

Remember that DOING is LESS exhausting than THINKING about doing it.

Your body is better at learning by example. Clarity comes from DOING. You remember ideas better when used in context (like practice questions).

We don’t like testing ourselves and grading ourselves at first because it bruises our ego. But not passing hurts more than struggling now. The way you win more is to lose more.

Like going to the gym, it’s worth it once we push through that initial resistance and end up with a good sore the next day.

Eat and then digest

It seems effective at first to focus on absorbing the information. You feel better if you get your ducks in a row first.

This is called “studying.” Studying and learning are not the same.

To be clear, the issue is NOT that you’re studying outlines and getting a structured introduction to the material from lectures. You do need that initial foundation at first

When you’re hungry, you eat.

The issue is when ALL you do is eat, when you continue doing this well past diminishing returns. You’re stuck in your chair, bloated.

You could “eat” all the content (lectures, outlines, flashcards) and not build anything with it. You could stuff yourself with information BUT don’t bother to process and digest what you consumed (learn and retain by applying to exercise questions). You pile up bricks without building anything.

Instead: Eat and then digest.

Remember that we don’t get scored on how well we watch videos and take notes. We’re scored on how correctly we answer questions.

This means your time is better spent on practice questions, essay attempts, anything that forces you to retrieve and use the information rather than just absorb it. And most importantly, reviewing your work against model answers.

(Do both using this archive of past exam questions.)

Once we get over the FOMO from lectures and trying to review everything “just in case,” we realize that the way to gain the skill to write passing essays/PTs and answer MBE questions correctly is quite simple:

You attempt to solve a question ➡ You get things wrong ➡ You figure out what you did right or wrong ➡ You realize what to do differently next time based on your errors.

The most effective way to learn and understand is by trial and error. This is how machine learning works. Treat yourself like some kind of artificial intelligence.

Simple, right?

But you already knew what to do. Reduce the noise and focus on what moves the needle in bar prep. The problem is that you don’t trust yourself enough to do it.

There’s a lot of bloat and distraction out there.

Why switching feels so uncomfortable

Practice questions are uncomfortable in a way that lectures and cozy outlines aren’t. When you get something wrong, you know you got it wrong. It bruises our ego. But not passing hurts more than struggling now.

Getting questions wrong is exactly the point because it tells you where the gaps are. Watching a lecture gives you no feedback.

Again, this isn’t a call to skip the foundational review entirely. You need the initial exposure to the material. But that exposure is just a starting point. Don’t get stuck playing defense.

After you cover a chunk of subject matter, test yourself:

• Find MBE questions to practice with, and know the highly tested topics. (Hint: The NCBE tells us straight up that there WILL be 36-39 questions on just three topics for a whopping 21.43% of your total score.)
• Find past exam questions (essays and performance tests) to practice with.
• Get things wrong. Study the sample answers. Use those wrong answers as clues for what to review. THIS is the time to go back to study your outline more intensely.

(Magicsheets and Passer’s Playbook come with a spreadsheet that tells you the exact frequency breakdowns of all the MBE subtopics.)

Do it again. Watch yourself become more proficient at answering questions.

This might feel uncomfortable at first, but it’s LESS exhausting than passive consumption alone. You feel actual progress → you get motivated and excited. You actually know where you stand. You know what’s sticking and what isn’t. You know when you’re improving.

You come to sense that it’s not just about having the knowledge. If all you did was memorize some rule as a fact, your body has no clue what it needs to do. You have to live and experience it yourself.

“Stop standing there, and give it a try. Techniques that are only shown to you are completely useless. It’s only when you experience them yourself that you can learn how to use and execute them effectively.”

This kind of “click” moment is so important to bar exam takers.

Those “aha” moments are like little dopamine hits. They introduce more enjoyment (and thus less mental friction) than memorizing abstract ideas.

That’s how you make progress and actually be productive in bar prep.

More on how to take control of your studies. Passers often tell me that this idea was the foundation of their reason for success.